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(8)Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door vs (9)Tales of Symphonia 2015
Results Round One Saturday, November 7, 2015 Ulti's Analysis This was our first close match this contest, though it was hardly some barn-burner and was honestly decided very early. This contest was pretty lacking in photo finishes, but really you can't expect insanely close finishes when tens of thousands of votes are out there. We were just spoiled back in the day. Anyway, this was the part of the match where Tales of Symphonia got to do its seasonal choke job, and for whatever reason people thought Tales could win this match. Not only was it against FREAKING Mario, not only was it not DAT TOP OPTION in a debated closely-seeded match, not only has Tales proven time and again it doesn't win anything, but it was a JRPG against another JRPG on the exact same system. Tales was fighting very uphill before this match began, and honestly it making this a match at all was an accomplishment. The prediction percentage lined up with bracket voting likely giving Paper Mario its early lead in the match, and 30 minutes in it had a lead of 200 with the percentages hovering around 55-45. From there Tales treated us to one of those matches where the numbers looked much closer than the actual match suggested. Tales bled percentage and Tales made some minor cuts here and there, even slowly bleeding 100 votes off the lead overnight, but when the morning vote favored Mario, that was that. Match over. Not that we would have to wait long for our first "HOLY SHIT" match of this contest, which of course involved Mario yet again because that's what he does. The weird thing about this match is I honestly do feel like Tales wins if the seedings were reversed, but it's Tales of Symphonia's destiny to job out in these things. It's like watching Clockwork in competitive MvC2. He's fun to watch, but you know he's going to lose. Ctes's Analysis This match was closest of the contest so far, but it was never really that interesting. TTYD took the lead from the get go and never truly looked back. ToS got a bunch of cuts throughout the match but TTYD almost always got it back within the next few updates. The exception was the deadzone where ToS actually cut off a decent amount of TTYD's lead, but when the morning vote came, that was all lost again. Considering we said we trends were gone, it's weird how they were actually here for this match. ToS stalled very well during different parts of the day, but except for a brief moment during the deadzone, it never really god to make its move. In the big picture, the match was stable the whole way through. If you were a major ToS supporter, I could imagine you'd be hooked on this match especially during the deadzone when a comeback didn't look entirely impossible, but I can't imagine anyone following it for that long. As a major TTYD supporter, I looked at the match a little bit and felt completely safe in TTYD's victory. One might argue that brackets gave TTYD the edge, but it only had a little bit more than half of them, I doubt it really mattered. Top option? Not really an issue this contest considering the format put the games next to each other instead. TTYD was simply just slightly stronger. Nothing more to say about it than that. TTYD is one of the four contenders for my absolute favorite game, I find it to be perfection, so naturally I really enjoyed this match. Of the four, TTYD is easily the least popular one, though it's mostly because the others, FFVII, CT and SMW, are among the most popular games out there. When Allen indirectly hinted that it made the contest by stating that he didn't take “the Paper series” into consideration when claiming Final Fantasy had the most entrants, I was already happy enough. Seeing it get a winnable match was really great, even if I knew it'd be blown out next round. I wish the original Paper Mario had got a different bracket placement, which I'll get back to when that match comes, but I'm glad to see TTYD outlast its predecessor this time. It got a much higher seed this time too proving its the favorite! Glad to see we've agreed on that. External Links * Match Updates * Oracle Match Results • Previous Match • Next Match Category:2015 Contest Matches